The Choices We Make, The Road We Take
by MoshPit
Summary: A look at what might have been. Garunteed to be unlike anything you've ever seen before.
1. Goodbye, my friends

The Choices We Make; The Roads We Take

MoshPit

A/N: In order to fully understand this fic, you **_must_** have seen "TOW all the Kips", since the incident this revolves around is mentioned and forgotten in this one episode. If the title is unfamiliar, it's the episode where this exchange happens:

Rachel: You gotta come with me.

Phoebe: Come where?

Rachel: Where ever I go. Come on, you and me. We'll – we'll start a new group. We're the best ones!

Phoebe: Okay, but try and get Joey, too

Some people say that for every choice you make, a separate universe is created, where everything is altered based on that one choice. Why not take a look at what may have been, in another time.

~(*)(*)(*)~

12:00 a.m.-

A doorway squeaks open, and a figure creeps out into his darkened apartment. The room is silent, the peace broken only by the lights and sounds of the city below. The figure makes his way across the room. A thud, followed by a light curse, is heard, as the figure bangs his knee against the kitchen counter. 

Hastily, he scribbles a message on the magna-doodle.

"I've got my cell. Call me."

Without a look back, he leaves his life behind.

12:05 a.m.-

A single tear, one of many, traces the trail of the tear before it down her face. It ends where the others before it all have; on a picture of her and her friends. Shadows of fear and doubt had been lurking in her mind all day. Was this for the best? How could she just _leave_? Could they ever forgive her? Would they _forget_ her?

She quietly and carefully places the picture back on the table where it came from. She crosses the floor, leaving a note near the phone. Taking deep breaths, she opens the door. He's there, waiting for her, bag over his shoulder and goofy smile on his face. He takes her hand in his, and they leave their world forever.

12:10 a.m.-

They sit together on the sidewalk in front of what used to be their building. They are silent as they sit side by side, hand in hand. Headlights are seen as a taxi approaches. It slows to a stop in front of them. 

A blond sticks her head out of the driver's window. "Going my way?" she asks, winking at them knowingly. The two enter the vehicle.

An engine revs; taillights fading in the distance; three friends are lost forever.

7:15 a.m.-

Monica poked her head out of her bedroom. Someone was pounding frantically on her door. Tying her bathrobe, she made her way to the door. There stood Chandler, still in his pajamas with a worried look on his face.

"Chandler! What are you doing? You'll wake up Rachel."

"Joey's gone." Monica eyed him curiously.

"Gone?"

"Gone! Left! Vamoosed! Disappeared! Not here!" He crossed to Rachel's room and banged on her door. No answer. Chandler raised and eyebrow and tried again. He looked to Monica for guidance. She timidly rapped on the door before entering. She quickly rushed out, hands over her mouth.

"Rachel's gone, too." 

"Well, what do we do?" 

"I – I – I don't know," she started, heading for the phone. "We call Ross, or Phoebe, or – or – or… oh." She stopped, picking up a piece of paper lying by the phone. Her hand flew to her mouth. Chandler rushed to her side.

"Sweetheart, what's wrong?" Monica handed him the tear-stained paper.

__

Dear Chandler, and Ross, and Mon,

I am so **so** sorry. I know I should be the bigger person here, and never see Ross again, or find some way to deal with Emily, but I can't. I just can't, and I'm sorry. So I'm leaving. Joey and Phoebe are coming with me, for moral support.

Don't think I'm leaving because I hate you guys. I love you three more than I love my own sisters. I love you, and I am going to miss you all so much. Please don't be angry.

Love, 

Rachel K. Green 


	2. Where to go?

The Choices We Make, The Roads We Take

MoshPit

"So Pheebs, where are we heading?" They had been driving for seven hours now. Rachel sat in front, driving, with Phoebe beside her with the map, and Joey in the backseat, resting. The passenger seat blonde regarded the road map in front of her.

"Fishers, Indiana," she stated simply. Joey opened a sleepy eye.

"You aren't making places up again, are you?" Phoebe shook her head.

"No, no. When I was seventeen, I started hitchhiking across America. I stopped there, and someone gave me a pair of shoes." Rachel raised an eyebrow at her friend. 

"They just _gave_ you a pair of shoes?"

"Well, more like through them at my head, but they were good shoes!" Joey leaned over Phoebe's shoulder.

"Show me were this Fish place is," he said. Phoebe pointed to a spot on the map. The man squinted to find it amid the mass of squiggles and lines. "I can't find it. Move your finger." The blonde did as she was told, and he found it, the tiny, tiny town of Fishers.

"We can't live there!" he exclaimed loudly.

"Why not!" Phoebe yelled back, equally loud.

"It's a dot! We can't live in a dot! We just left New York City. You can't go from the Big Apple to a dot."

"New York City is just a dot, too," the woman huffed in defense. Joey narrowed his eyes at her.

"New York is not a dot. It's a blotch. The greatest blotch in all of America. This Fish city," he growled, jabbing at the map, finger no where near the city in question, "is barely a speck. We can't live there. Period. End of story."

"You know, Pheebs," Rachel said, taking her turn in the conversation, "as great as this Fishing-"

"Fishers."

"Fishers is, I don't think we're all quite ready for the small town life. Maybe we could go to a smaller city?" Phoebe regarded this idea.

"You mean like Annapolis?" 

"Well, I was thinking more along the lines of Chicago." Phoebe's eyes lit up with excitement.

"I love Chicago!"

"Yeah, me too!" Joey quipped from the backseat.

"Alright then!" Rachel exclaimed, thumping the steering wheel triumphantly, "Chicago it is!" The car remained silent for ten minutes, and then—

"Rach?" a soft voice inquired from the backseat of the taxi.

"Yeah, Joe?"

"Where are we gonna stay?"


	3. The FLOOR

The Choices We Make, The Roads We Take

MoshPit

"You go in first."

"Nuh-uh. Rachel, you go first."

"Oooh no. I think Joey should go first." There they stood, in the doorway of room 32C, a small, two bedroom, one bath apartment on the west side of Chicago. The first thing they had done when they came to the city was look up an apartment building with a room available, and this is what they got.

Joey placed a tentative foot on the unfurnished floor and winced as the boards beneath his feet groaned heavily.

"I don't think that's such a good idea," he observed, withdrawing his foot. "I could fall through."

"Any one of us could fall through, Joey," Phoebe said knowingly. This was true. The floor to the room looked like it wouldn't support a kitten, much less a full-grown human being. 

"Yes, but I'm heavier than the two of you. It's a bigger risk for me."

"All the more reason you should go first!" Rachel said encouragingly. "If the floor holds you, surely it'll hold little old us." Phoebe and Rachel smiled sweetly to seal the deal. Joey sighed.

"The things I do for you two." He took a deep breath, and ventured into that where no man had tread in a long time: Room 32C.

There was a stale smell in the air, Joey couldn't identify what. This worried him, as he often prided himself in his ability to distinguish smells. A cockroach skittered across his foot. He yelped and kicked, sending the poor bug airborne in the direction of his two female companions, who erupted into a mass of screams.

"Joey! That thing almost touched us!" Phoebe screeched. Joey made a face at her.

"Well, I guess we didn't have much to worry about," he started, bouncing on the floor a bit. "These boards seem pretty stable."

**__**

CRRRAAACK

A cloud of dust, mold and mildew settled around the hole in the floor where Joey Tribianni once stood. A pitiful 'ow' leaked up from the floor below. 

Rachel and Phoebe hurried gently to the hole. "Joey, honey?" Rachel called into the hole. "Are you alright?"

"We should look into getting 32B," came the response. "The floor's strong enough."


End file.
